


The White City

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Lord of the Rings (Movies), Matthew Swift Series - Kate Griffin
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Tolkien must be judging me, movie-verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Boromir sees the White City and feels joy fill his heart; laughs with his people; kneels by the White Tree and loves Minas Tirith as he loves all of Gondor. Yet when he reaches out as his father instructs, trying to make contact with the same essence of life that strengthened Steward after Steward, there is nothing to be found.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>There is love for Gondor; but there is no magic.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The White City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarlingGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/gifts).



> I am well aware that Tolkien is rolling in his grave right now. I am also well aware that my writing style and general abilities cannot measure up to what either of these sources deserve. I can only apologise, and blame the fact that thinking of this crossover is the only thing that has ever made Boromir's story worse.
> 
> Adhering strictly to movie-verse, as far as I adhere to anything, because the books are a gift and I haven't read them nearly recently enough to fairly follow them.

There is magic in Middle Earth. All those who walk upon it soil, who feel its air upon their faces, know this to be true. 

It goes beyond the rings of power and the wandering wizards, with their power both so potent and so distant. It lies within the very lifeblood of all its inhabitants – for, as Boromir, son of Denethor, has heard since his childhood, life is magic.

For a select few, it is a magic one can harness, turn to one’s will. Tales wind through taverns and a thousand fireplaces of how not just an elf may turn the rhythms of nature to their whim; how dwarves seek out the finest seams; how within every city lies the potential to repel any foe. The gift can be capricious, and cannot be learnt, yet it remains as an inspiration for those who feel steeped in the ordinary.

In Gondor, it is far more than a story. Generation after generation, the Stewards have summoned the very heart of Minas Tirith to turn back the enemy. Seeking to protect their land, the White City looms tall within their minds, the strength needed to turn back the evil of Mordor forever at their fingertips.

Fortunately, the legends serve to reassure the people – for now, at least. But, Boromir cannot help but reflect, every day of the lengthening shadow will bring whispers of the weakness eating at the heart of Gondor. For Denethor will pass from this world eventually – indeed, it often seems as if he has done so already, retreating into his tower as he has – and the next in line cannot help his people.

Boromir sees the White City and feels joy fill his heart; laughs with his people; kneels by the White Tree and loves Minas Tirith as he loves all of Gondor. Yet when he reaches out as his father instructs, trying to make contact with the same essence of life that strengthened Steward after Steward, there is nothing to be found.

There is love for Gondor; but there is no magic.

It is a burden he has borne his entire life. He leads his people into glorious battle, and yet when he finally retakes Osgiliath, there is no answering rush behind his own triumph. He does not _know_ that this city belongs to him, nor that he belongs to this city.

There is no light to match that in the eyes of his brother.

Whilst they were still children, Boromir noticed the difference between them. Speaking of Gondor, he would feel pride, pride in all that it stood for, and to him Minas Tirith was the centre of everything; but when it came to Faramir, there were no grand speeches, only something that shone from within. Behind Denethor’s back, Faramir healed the wounds of both of them by drawing what strength was left (so he said) within the White Tree. They walked the streets side by side, and whatever Denethor took from Faramir, the city clearly returned to him. There was nothing personal about it, for Faramir remained the quieter son, respectful, overlooked.

“Tell him,” Boromir had insisted, and then begged, again and again, “tell him, that Gondor might have its true Steward.”

Faramir had only smiled. “It will, I assure you.”

“Please. I will be there, I will vouch for you, I will make him listen. Do not let our people suffer for my own failings.”

“They are not failings,” and Faramir’s voice would come as close to anger as Boromir had ever heard it, the anger that would soon cool into something deadlier to them all, “and our father would rather have a son of whom he can be proud, than a son with his head lost in dreams.”

In watching him, Boromir knew that they were not dreams. Faramir appeared lost at times, or distracted, because the city distracted him. Yet he would not speak.

“I have heard tell,” he had announced one day, a day Boromir curses, “that one such as myself might learn to use the forests and rivers the same as stones or gateways.”

“It is not your magic.”

“Does that matter?” Boromir had wanted to shake sense into him, make him see that this was where Faramir belonged, with him, with the people of Gondor. “If Father wanted me at all, he would have taught us both to defend this land. He sees you at a disadvantage yet he has not raised us to support one another. What we can do, we learnt alone. He will not accept me, and should he discover what I am, he will not accept it. He will accuse me of stealing it from you.” 

More than anything, Boromir wished to deny it. But the future Steward of Gondor should value truth above all else.

“I can still defend our land, our people, out there. I will hardly be gone, Brother; but I might make it a little easier for you, and put this magic to some greater use.”

He had managed it; Boromir had never doubted that he could. Yet that did little to ease the pain of watching the strain leave his brother’s eyes and shoulders when his own city reached out its arms to embrace him, and he could be that to which he had been born.

\----------

It is impossible not to see the value of the Ring.

The dangers are many, Boromir knows this; he also knows the temptation will be great. But when Denethor speaks to him of it, tells him that the Ring will give him power, the power denied to him by birth, the power to defend his country at last, he cannot deny it.

He bids farewell to his brother. Neither of them speak of the reason why Boromir feels that he must go.

Gondor’s light is failing. The White Tree is dying. Boromir cannot deny these things, even his father insists on doing so, and if he needed proof, it lies in Faramir’s eyes whenever he returns to the city. The fault lies with Boromir, therefore so does the solution.

Whatever he had been expecting, it had not been to meet with the mythical figure which had loomed so large in Faramir’s dreams – the one whom his brother had been able to conjure from fire or water in Osgiliath when the men needed protection.

Aragorn, son of Arathorn. The Heir of Elendil. The true king of Gondor.

Yet when Boromir watches him – watches him weave Elvish magic, spinning grass into beds and shadows into protection with greater finesse than Faramir (his brother constantly struggling to see the woods as walls, the lakes as squares) – he feels only disappointment. Disappointment and disgust and despair, as it seems even its alleged king will not hear Minas Tirith’s song. Boromir will not step aside for this man; not when he clearly carries no love for the country or its people, not when he favours Elven ways, and not when Faramir still lingers in his forest prison.

The light that comes into Aragorn’s eyes in Lothlorien, though – the light Boromir only recognises because he has seen it a thousand times when his brother returns home – that only brings further anger. 

“My people are suffering,” he rages, every care and concern wrenched into the open within this suffocating place, “and you would waste your magic on flowers and trees!”

“There is life in everything,” Aragorn replies, infuriatingly calm, “and hence there is magic.”

Aragorn refuses to acknowledge the people of Gondor. All along the river, Boromir feels it cut away at him, bit by bit: he loves his people, would do all that he can, would _die_ for them, and yet a man who abandons them could do all that he cannot. (He proposes the path through Gondor, if only to force the magic out of Aragorn, yet once again he is defeated.) He rails against the injustice, fighting screams in the night as his city and all who live within burn whilst he sits in his tower and does nothing.

(In truth, he knows, he would be out in the streets, or Pelennor Fields, striking down his foes the way he has been taught, the men rallying behind their leader regardless of his merit – only would they, he wonders in the dark, knowing he is inadequate, knowing he is doomed to failure and so too their city?)

The only relief – if it could be called that – comes with the thought of the Ring. It is not true relief – an end to torment – for there is suffering there as well; but within lies a type of hope, and that is enough.

With the Ring, he would at last have power; the power he needs; the power he deserves. All Stewards have marched into battle with the power of their city at their backs. Boromir knows himself to be the next in the line, and thus the power is owed to him. He knows it. He _knows_ it.

Until Frodo vanishes, and there, alone, far away from Gondor and all that he loves so deeply it burns like a fire consuming him, he sees the truth.

He would have power.

But with it, he would have destroyed Gondor.

There is no way that he can atone for this failure. Should he ever return to his White City, he will still lack the power necessary, and now more than ever he sees his own inadequacy; the truth that he will never have enough.

He wants to see Faramir; wants to tell him that none of it matters; that when Denethor is dead, the people will not care that one brother holds the shield and the other the magic. They can guard Gondor together. Aragorn might have abandoned them, but the Stewards will fulfil the responsibility with which they have been charged.

(Has Aragorn truly abandoned them? From the vantage of this clarity, Boromir remembers the rejection of ‘your people’, yet also he sees something else. He wonders at the burden of the man in Rivendell’s halls, and alongside Faramir, if he must wish and beg here, he considers the gifts he might have known should he call this man ‘friend’.)

Only the orcs swarm around him, foul, hate-filled, and before he has even struck his first blow, Boromir already knows the truth: that he will never see Gondor again.

Within his mind, he can summon a mist-covered image of Minas Tirith, but that is all. All he can think of, in his despair, before battle comes to save him once more, is that he finally has proof that the city does not speak to him. The thought, for all its pain, at least does him the service of resigning him to this last battle; one last stand, to atone for all that he has done, and all of which he has fallen short.

A good thing, he reflects, taking up his sword, that his father’s only answer to a lack of magic, was to compensate with war.

(He left his shield behind; that which has always felt far more suited to his arm than a sword.)

When the arrows begin to come, they feel final. Good. Boromir would like his end to be grand, but above all else, he would like it not to drag. The prospect of slipping slowly into darkness does not appeal.

He fights on, finding strength from a source he does not recognise. He fights to defend the Halflings, because they are innocent, and he fights to protect Frodo, because with him lie all of Gondor’s hopes, and he fights to protect them all, because that is all he has ever been able to do.

Falling to his knees at last, he realises the Horn of Gondor is broken. 

In olden times – not so olden, he reflects through the blood – a blast on that horn could summon the spirits of all of Gondor’s protectors. Every soldier that ever was might answer the call, provided its user were strong enough. It made it a weapon in itself; a weapon to be feared. A weapon that has shattered like Elendil’s blade beneath Sauron’s boot, because Boromir has never been fit to wield it. In his hands, it was only a horn.

Gondor will fall.

Aragorn saves him, and Boromir’s gratitude is muted. After all, death is so close upon him already.

Only then he hears the words he has longed to hear.

“I do not know what strength is in my blood, but I swear to you I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.”

“Our people,” he repeats, and the thought gives him strength. “Our people.” Strength to cling to a man who will succeed where Boromir has failed. All of his fear and despair somehow falls away at those words, because now he has fulfilled the one task of the Stewards: he protected Gondor, ready for the return of her King. 

He sees it in Aragorn’s eyes, and once again, Boromir knows the truth from his brother. Aragorn learnt the woods for no other path lay before him; yet now, he can see, Gondor will not be abandoned. 

Perhaps now Faramir might truly return home, and remain there.

“I would have would have followed you, my brother,” he forces through weakening lips. He wants to tell Aragorn to take his vambraces – a piece of the White City, a part that the Stewards might carry away to protect them, another weapon which has always lain dead in Boromir’s hands. 

Yet those words are reluctant to come. So Boromir focuses his strength on those that matter.

“My captain.

“My King.”

He is ready now, he thinks. The darkness is already gathering, and he believes himself to be at peace.

Until his fading vision shows his king leaning in close, a hand reaching out to hold his head, and suddenly both forest and pain vanish.

Boromir still lies beneath a tree. However, when he looks up through its boughs, he realises that this is not some unfamiliar species, but the White Tree herself. Yet this is not the White Tree that he has known throughout his life – dying, fading, corrupted like the city. This tree is in bloom, flowers unfurled, sweet scents drifting down to wrap him in contentment. This is the tree that should always have stood here.

From here, sitting up – the pain gone now, wounds unimportant – he can see all of Minas Tirith spreading out beneath him. He can hear the familiar sounds of the city, of _home_ , accompanied by the sights and smells which have woven their way throughout his life: not simply the grandeur of white walls and elegant fountains, but the tumult of the marketplace and the stink of citizens taking their relief. He knows it all to be there; he knows it all to be a part of the city. He knows each and every one of the stones, counted and valued within his mind to an extent he has never experienced before. 

Now come to rest, he can feel every breath and cry of not only the people, but also of the city that he has always loved so much. His love which now reaches new heights, seeing as he does the city that his brother and his King see; nothing grander or richer, he realises, nothing beyond the same city, with its beauties brought to the forefront to stir him anew.

In the distance, he thinks he hears words.

“Be at peace, Son of Gondor.”

It matters not.

He does not feel the moment the vision passes into dreaming, and that too does not matter.

Boromir, Steward of Gondor in heart if not by name, dreams of his city and his people content, and passes into peace.


End file.
